New Witnesses Explain Why Kids Were Inside Hot Car in Katy

HOUSTON - A video has gone viral after the man who captured the scene claimed a mother left her kids locked inside a hot car.

“She came out of the hair place from what I’ve seen,” said Gabriel del Valle.

But one day later the story took a new turn when other witnesses claimed the mother wasn’t guilty of anything.

“It’s not like she left the kids in the car, no” said Azir Brohi. “It’s not like she did something wrong.”

Brohi is the owner of the Postal+ store located off of Fry Road and West Little York. He has the surveillance tape to prove it. The video inside the store shows the mother walk in with her two kids. You can see them playing in the store as mom wraps up an errand. She then grabs her toddlers’ hand, and they walk out together.

“When she finished, she went outside and was putting her kids in the car like normal,” said Heidy Lopez, a Postal+ employee and witness. “When she was finished putting them in the car seat, I guess that’s when it locked and that’s when everything happened.”

The kids were locked inside and so were mom’s keys. On the tape, you see her frantically walk back in the postal store and ask for help. At mom’s request, a customer inside the postal store grabs a hammer and breaks her back window. Kids are crying in the background. The concerned mother is visibly upset too.

“She was screaming trying to get the little girl to open the door,” said del Valle.

In fact, it’s mom that slides through the broken window to grab her kids. Folks inside Postal+ said the mom was not negligent and was not getting a haircut. From start to finish, witnesses said the kids were in the car less than five minutes.

“Like a caring mother, she watches over her kids,” said Lopez.She was only trying to get her kids out as fast as possible after an honest mistake. In the video, you see the customer who broke the window walk back in with cuts on his arm followed by the mother and her two toddlers sipping on bottles of water. They were happy to be out, happy to be back with mom.

“They were OK,” said Lopez. “She seemed happy and relieved. She came inside because she wanted to calm down after everything that happened.”

The police were not called. The Harris County Sheriff’s Department is not investigating this incident.

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